The New Rulers of the World

by John Pilger

Shortly before Christmas 1991, the Medical Educational Trust in London published a comprehensive study of casualties. Up to a quarter of a million men, women and children were killed or died as a direct result of the American-led attack on Iraq.60 This confirmed American and French intelligence estimates of ‘in excess of 200,000 deaths’.61 The sheer scale of this killing never entered public consciousness in the West. The famous American TV anchorman Dan Rather told his national audience: ‘There’s one thing we can all agree on. It’s the heroism of the 148 Americans who gave their lives so that freedom could live.’ In fact, a quarter of them had been killed, like their British comrades, by other Americans. Moreover, official citations describing how Americans had died heroically were fake.